ANALYSIS: Terror plots in
Europe and winds of change in Iran
Last month, Iran’s main opposition
the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) held its biggest rally in
suburban Paris. The colorful event was in many ways different from preceding
years as Iran continues to boil in dissent and protests spreading in far
corners of the nation.
Maryam Rajavi, President of the NCRI in her address said: “A passionate
generation thirsty for freedom has risen to take over the entire country and
take back Iran from the occupiers. This is the Iranian nation’s fight. The
regime’s overthrow is inevitable.”
The Washington
Times called it “a large, boisterous rally.” Many former and present
officials of countries from around the globe participated and delivered a
collective message of support for Iranian people and their struggle for a
better life.
They also voiced their support for
the vibrant alternative to the regime in Tehran; the NCRI. The meeting was
addressed by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Republican grandee Newt
Gingrich, and other senior Western officials.
In the past seven months, following
the first spark of new round of protests in Iran in late last year and early
this year, Iran has been on the edge. In a domino effect, cities in Iran from
Mashhad in the northwest, where the first protests started, got engulfed by
calls for freedom.
The protests have mushroomed in over
143 cities despite the most aggressive security measures adopted by the regime.
The participants in the protests gatherings across Iran chanted slogans unheard
of in the past. “Clerics shame on you, leave our country alone,” or “Death to
Khamenei, Death to Rouhani,” and “Reformists, conservatives, the game is over.”
Saeed Hajjarian an architect of
Iran’s Ministry of Inelegance and Security (MIOS) recently had this to say
about Iran’s uprisings: “We no longer have an internal feud among ourselves.
The real challenge today is with those determined to bring down the entire
system.” A political storm seems to be underway in Iran and it was time for the
same to reverberate in the rally in Paris.
Terror plot
Even as the rally unfolded, a
terrorist plot intending to target it was foiled by security forces in France
with the help of their German and Belgian partners. Timing of the plot was
significant because Hassan Rouhani was scheduled to visit Austria the next day.
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Rudy Giuliani attends “Free Iran 2018
- the Alternative” event in Villepinte on June 29, 2018. (AFP)
Assadollah Assadi masterminded the
plot while under diplomatic immunity from Austrian government. He was stationed
in Vienna. Assadi was caught red-handed when he was giving the explosives and
detonator to a sleeping cell, an Iranian born Belgian couple to carry out the
attack.
To put some flesh on the bones, the
Iranian regime’s history is marred by terrorism and hostage taking for
political gains. It all began with taking American diplomats hostage for 444
days in Tehran in late 70s.
Attacks on EU soil
This is not the first plot of its
kind on the European soil. On April 24, 1990, Kazem Rajavi was gunned down in
broad daylight by several agents of the Ministry
of Intelligence and Security of Iran as he was driving to his home in
Coppet, a village near Geneva.
He was Iran’s first Ambassador to the
United Nations headquarters in Geneva following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Shortly after his appointment, he resigned his post in protest to the
“repressive policies and terrorist activities of the ruling clerics in Iran”.
Mykonos restaurant in Berlin where
four Kurdish-Iranian leaders were assassinated by the Quds Force Special units
in 1992 was another notorious terror attack on European soil.
Referring to Assadollah Assadi arrest
in Germany, a US
official said that “the administration takes the arrest of the
diplomat “very seriously” and sees it as evidence that Iran is using diplomatic
compounds in Europe and elsewhere as cover to plot terrorist attacks.
The official dismissed Iranian
suggestions that it was a “false flag” operation intended to falsely accused
Iran of terrorism. The same US
official also said: “If Iran can plot bomb attacks in Paris, they can plot
attacks anywhere in the world, and we urge all nations to be vigilant about
Iran using embassies as diplomatic cover to plot terrorist
attacks
Speaking on background to reporters
flying with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from Abu Dhabi to Brussels, the
official dismissed as “ludicrous” the regime’s claim that the exiled opposition
group, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)/People’s Mujahedeen Organizationof Iran (MEK), was behind the plan to bomb its own event.
Iran’s neighbors be it Saudi Arabia,
Iraq, Bahrain and by extension Yemen, Syria and Lebanon have been the first
victims of terrorist attacks of theocratic regime in Tehran since 1979 revolution.
Since December, the Iranian regime put blame on the NCRI and MEK for their role
in leading the protests inside the country.
Plotting a major terrorist attack on
European soil has no doubt the blessings of both Ali Khamenei and Rouhani.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures. The Iranian regime took a high
risk in losing so little left of international credibly it might have had in
the eyes of the world and failed miserably.
The best EU can do now is to
implement its own decision adopted by the Council of Europe on April 29th 1997.
It required expelling all the Iranian regime’s mercenaries and intelligence and
security agents from European Union member states and barring them from
entering the EU again. It is time to show the rulers in Tehran that enough is
enough.
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